


may learned be by cyphers

by Siria



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Universe, Community: sticksandsnark, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-02
Updated: 2010-04-02
Packaged: 2017-10-08 14:52:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/76788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siria/pseuds/Siria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bletchley Park, England. January, 1943.</p>
            </blockquote>





	may learned be by cyphers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Telesilla](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Telesilla/gifts).



> Written for the Sticksandsnark Challenge for Telesilla, who wanted Teyla, Rodney and a historical AU. Thanks to Cate and Trin for betaing and cheerleading, and to Amberlynne for research assistance.

Teyla's breath hung heavy in the crisp air; the gravel crunched beneath the heels of her walking shoes. The mansion was less than two hundred yards from the railway station, but on an early January morning like this, she wished she'd thought to put on gloves before she stepped outside. She had been away from Canada for too long; grown too accustomed to England's milder winters. Burying her numb fingers deep in the pockets of her tweed coat, she quickened her pace. There may not have been much warmth waiting for her inside the mansion, but there would be all the strong-stewed tea Teyla could drink; she might at least be able to warm her chilled hands on a mug before she headed back to Hut 6.

"Train on time, then?"

Teyla should not have been so startled—it was no secret that whenever Rodney was mulling over a particularly difficult problem, he would come out here to skulk in the shrubbery and furtively chain smoke—but this morning, the sound of his voice was enough to make her jump. "As much as they ever are," she replied evenly, striking out over the frost-rimed grass towards him.

"So he might reach London by next Tuesday, hmm?" Rodney said. The circles under his eyes were deep; his hair, normally so neatly combed, had been raked in a dozen different directions by impatient fingers. Another night without sleep, then.

"I made sure that Captain Sheppard was equipped with sufficient sandwiches for the journey," Teyla said, and arched a significant eyebrow at him until Rodney sighed and rolled his eyes and handed a cigarette over to her.

"I presume I shouldn't mention all the cigarettes you've cadged off me this past month."

"And likewise I shouldn't mention the packets of Woodbines which have vanished from my desk drawer."

"A hit, a palpable hit," Rodney murmured under his breath, as Teyla retrieved her lighter from her pocket and lit up. The smoke spiralled upwards in the still air.

For a long moment, the silence between them was broken only by the distant sound of female voices and low laughter—ATS girls leaving breakfast and the joys of hot buttered toast, complaining about the frigid air—before Rodney said, "That little Czechoslovak thinks he's cracked it."

Teyla felt both her eyebrows rise a little in surprise. Radek was good, but this encryption had been strong enough to give both her and Rodney pause for the last three days. "So soon?"

Rodney gave a non-committal grunt. "Welchman agrees with him. He's given him free rein to test it on the bombes."

_And you do not_, Teyla did not have to say. She knew him that well by now. "And?"

"Are the basic principles right?" Rodney scratched at his jaw line, where he'd missed a patch while shaving. "Maybe. Are the decryptions going to be right? No."

Teyla tossed her cigarette away and ground it out underneath the heel of her shoe. There was no use in reminding Rodney how desperately those co-ordinates were needed, how little time they had left if they were to provide useful information on North Africa. "If we begin again—"

"We've lost too much time already," Rodney cut in. He took a deep drag on his cigarette. "And I don't—I know that the method is right, but there's something I'm just not getting."

Teyla wrapped her arms around herself. The sun was rising higher in the sky, but what little warmth it cast wasn't enough to stop her from shivering. It did not help that so many of her thoughts were caught up with images of the sun shining bright over Tripoli, with sand and blue skies and tank movements. "How many days has it been since you slept through the night, Rodney?"

"I don't see how that's relevant," he said, tone waspish, shoulders hunched.

"We've been over this before," Teyla said, calling on every bit of painful patience she'd ever earned, both since she'd come down from Cambridge and before. Rodney wouldn't look her in the eye. He'd smoked his cigarette down to a stub, wringing every last bit of nicotine from it, and his gaze was fixed firmly on the ground. "When you don't get enough sleep, you don't work well. And when you don't work well—"

"Yes, yes." Rodney waved an impatient hand at her. "I know, I know, but they'll be able to plaster over the dent in the wall. I'll be fine, the decryption will get done."

Teyla folded her arms and fixed him with the kind of stare that had always worked well on her undergraduates. "I was referring less to your ability to work, and more about the kind of atmosphere you're creating for the rest of us. I have my own work to do, you know—as do Mr Zelenka, and Miss Weir."

Rodney reddened and rolled his eyes and huffed, which meant that she had hit home. "All right, I'll grab some shut eye before going back to the Hut—but I'm right about the decryption method, you know it!"

"I'm sure you are, Rodney," Teyla said, and patted him reassuringly on the arm before steering him in the direction of the Mansion and the quarters he shared with some of the other cryptographers. "And some actual sleep _will_ help you work better," she offered with a sly smile.

His mouth quirked up into a half-grin. "You think you have me all figured out, don't you?"

"Well, I am a cryptographer," Teyla said blandly, fighting back a smile of her own.

***

In February of 1940, Teyla took the Northern Line to Charing Cross, walked to Westminster, hurried up the steps into a nondescript building and was ushered into a small, airless room that smelled of Jeyes' Fluid and dust. She was offered stewed, too-bitter tea and a cigarette. She refused the latter, but sipped slowly from the cup. The man sitting opposite her—short, burly, with a shock of red hair and a weak chin—had opened a manila file and said, "Miss Emmagan, I invited you here today because a former tutor of yours at Cambridge suggested I speak with you."

Teyla said nothing, but listened carefully as he spoke: the Germans had a machine called Enigma, capable of transforming messages into jumbled cyphertext. Each machine had rotating parts that could be set into billions of combinations; each machine's settings were changed every day; each branch of the German military used different settings. Her tea grew cold in its cup; she set it carefully back down on its saucer before folding her hands in her lap.

The Nazis believed that their code was unbreakable—not knowing which permutation of wheels and rotors was being used for an individual message meant that the chances of being able to decipher that message were conservatively estimated at one hundred and fifty million million million to one. "It is a matter," the man behind the desk said, "of some urgency, importance, and delicacy. With your mathematical abilities, we believe that you may be an asset for us at the GCCS."

Several years in Britain still had not quite accustomed Teyla to the British talent for understatement. Somewhere outside, beyond the thick walls, an air raid test siren sounded. Teyla looked down at her hands—at the writing callus on her middle finger; at the faint splotches of ink she hadn't quite managed to scrub off; at the ragged ends of her fingernails, chewed almost to the quick when she sat in her carrel in the British Library. What this man was asking her to do seemed impossible, but it was, she supposed, the work her hands had been made for.

She took the train to Bletchley the next morning.

***

Teyla left Rodney to sleep—he'd done little more than kick off his shoes and loosen his tie before passing out on his bed—before fetching herself that long-overdue cup of tea and setting off for Hut 6. All the usual suspects were there, and one or two of them even looked up when the door swung closed behind her—Zelenka gave her an absent-minded smile; Miss Cadman, one of the ATS girls, shot her off a cheeky salute—as she made her way over to her desk. More ignored her, but Teyla was used to that—she was one of only three female cryptanalysts at Bletchley, and the only one who was, as Mr Caldwell snidely put it, a "colonial."

Teyla knew that Miss Cadman often spit in Mr Caldwell's tea. She couldn't really find it in herself to disapprove.

As always, her small desk was almost invisible beneath the piles of paper stacked on top of it. Teyla made herself a little space on the desk and got comfortable—kicking off her shoes, pushing most of the stacks out of the way and getting to work on the most urgent decryptions, while turning over Rodney's problem at the back of her mind. She worked her way down the page, pencilling notations as she went. When they finally succeeded in making bombes that could decrypt on average faster than a cryptographer's mind could work—and succeeded in making enough of the machines—Teyla knew that she would have both a cleaner desk and a chance at more sleep. She also knew that she would miss this—this complicated, enjoyable, life-threatening game; Ariadne following the thinnest skein of thread through the labyrinth.

***

Her first day at the park, Teyla was shown where to leave her hat and coat and small valise, and led outside and into a large hut. It was alive with conversation, full of movement and activity, and Teyla would have been hard-pressed to know where to look first if Rodney hadn't been standing right in front of her. His shirtsleeves were rolled up, and he was elbows deep in some kind of machine—seven feet tall, its case made of polished bronze—swearing at it and coaxing it in equal measure.

"Is _anyone_ going to hand me a bloody wrench," he snapped. "Or are you all waiting for me to grow a third arm?"

Teyla stooped and retrieved the wrench from the toolbox at his feet, silently handing it to him over his shoulder. "Finally," he mumbled, "Some initiative, how lovely, thank you."

Teyla took a step back and counted off the seconds. She reached twelve before Rodney's back stiffened and he turned around very carefully to look at her. "Ah," he said, his tone carefully formal. "Miss Emmagan." He held out a hand for her to shake. "An unexpected pleasure."

"Well," Teyla said, letting just a little archness into her voice. "It seems I was recommended for the position by a former tutor of mine."

Rodney cleared his throat. Teyla was aware that other eyes were watching them; she found she didn't quite care. She was more preoccupied with watching the faint flush in his cheeks, the muscle that was leaping in his jaw, when he said, "Well, I always found your work to be very, uh, very impressive. And very needed at the present—I am, as ever, surrounded by imbeciles who think that the best way to get a malfunctioning bombe working again is to _hit it_." His voice grew louder as he spoke, and Teyla noticed a corresponding increase in the devotion of the others around them to their work.

Time away from Cambridge, it seemed, had not dulled Rodney's capacity to speak much, but say little. It was both amusing and frustrating to Teyla; sometimes she allowed herself to wonder what she would do when the frustration finally won out over the amusement.

***

A bombe was an electromechanical device approximately the height and breadth of a large bookcase. Viewed from one side, it consisted of nine rows of revolving drums; from the other, of intricate coils of ten miles of coloured wire and a million soldered connections. It was almost impossibly elaborate, high-strung and delicate, needing constant supervision; it operated by working through combinations wheel order by wheel order, and discovering which of the seventeen thousand possible positions of the machine, combined with which of the half billion possible Stecker values would satisfy the conditions of the code.

Once, Teyla had tried to explain it to Jennifer—the pleasurable tension of it; the focus required to find the pattern hidden in the jumble of letters and numbers—all without being able to tell her exactly what it was that everyone at Bletchley did. They sat in the Lyons' Corner House on Tottenham Court Road, drinking strong-brewed tea and eating currant scones, watching through the windows as Londoners scurried by along a street made blurred and indistinct by the heavy rain. Despite the weather, Teyla was glad to be away from the Park for the day, even if she'd had to spend part of it on official business. With so many people posted there now, it felt a little claustrophobic at times, everyone living and working in one another's pockets, no matter how engaging their work was—Jennifer had expressed much the same kind of gratitude for her three days' leave from her post as MO in a POW camp near Braintree.

Jennifer had looked a little bemused at Teyla's explanation, but smiled. "I'm glad it makes you happy," she said, voice laced with laughter and teasing. "Even if it _is_ caused by mathematics. Or, should I say, a certain maths lecturer."

"Mm," Teyla said noncommittally, "and I am glad that you're happy—even if it _is_ caused by performing emergency surgery and the company of a certain GI."

Jennifer's cheeks flushed deep red and she choked a little on her scone. "We're not... the lieutenant and I are simply..."

"I see," Teyla said mildly, and hid her smile behind her cup of tea.

***

A little after eleven, just when Teyla was contemplating another cup of tea, a cigarette, and perhaps a piece of shortbread, the door of the hut flew open and Rodney marched in. His hair was flattened on one side from where he'd lain on the pillow, sticking straight up on the other, and he carried a sheaf of crumpled, close-written pages in his hand. However much sleep he'd succeeded in getting, it hadn't been enough. He looked wildly excited and not a little deranged, and he was already talking as he walked in.

"—and of course, Radek," he was saying, "you were wrong—well, that is to say, you were partially right, but you didn't factor in for—which really, fundamentally, I can't understand why I didn't think of it myself—though of course, obviously, I did—and so if we change the methodology just there, well it's obvious, isn't it?"

"_Jezisi_," Mr Zelenka said, standing up and taking the papers Rodney thrust into his hand, "We have but two languages in common, McKay, English and Latin—please pick one."

"Look!" Rodney said, jabbing his finger at a point on a page that, even from the vantage point of her desk, Teyla could see was heavily underlined, written with a pen pressed so heavily to the page that the ink was bleeding through. "_Look_!"

There was a moment's silence, while Teyla craned her neck to see what Rodney had written. Then, "_Jo, jo, chápu_!" Radek exclaimed, throwing his hands up in the air before running out of the hut, yelling for someone to come help him with resetting the bombes.

Rodney turned to Teyla. The grin on his face was incandescent, his whole frame alive with energy and delight. "I," he told her, "am a genius," then stooped in one quick movement to cup her face in his ink-stained hands and kiss her. Teyla was so startled that her eyes stayed open even as she let herself kiss him back—let herself catalogue the flutter of Rodney's eyelashes, the fine lines around his eyes, the pale stubble on his cheeks. His lips were chapped, his mouth surprisingly warm, and he blinked at her in surprise when he finally pulled away.

For a long moment, no one spoke. The only sound in the hut was the clatter of keys as the ATS girls conscientiously bent their heads over their work, sneaking glances at the two of them out of the corners of their eyes. Then Miss Cadman let out a low wolf whistle and said, "Nicely done, McKay."

It earned her a soft-spoken rebuke from Miss Weir, but not before Rodney blurted out, "I—my apologies, Miss Emmagan. I shouldn't have done that." He sketched out a jerky, awkward little bow, as formal as if he were a gentleman of eighty, and left the hut, closing the door gently behind him.

***

Rodney was there to applaud her when she received her degree from Cambridge—a solitary figure standing at the back of the hall in his own cap and gown, applauding fiercely when she received the scroll. He treated her to lunch, cheered her up with outraged anecdotes whenever she was reminded that her family could not be there to share the day with her, and acquiesced with mostly good grace to Teyla's one request for the day.

"This is terribly stereotypical, you know," Rodney grumbled. The Backs flowed along on either side of them, the buildings lit up by the golden summer sunlight, and Teyla let herself relax and enjoy the view. She couldn't remember the last time she had been able to simply enjoy Cambridge, but she was determined to do so today—after so many years of hard work, after so many setbacks and doors closed in her face, she was a graduate. Her hands felt strange without a pen in them, her body more used to sitting in a library chair than the punt which Rodney was carefully guiding down the Cam, but it felt so good to tilt her head back and let herself enjoy the sun.

"You are doing an excellent job," Teyla murmured.

"Don't think I don't know what you're doing," Rodney said. "Flattery will get you nowhere with me, ma'am."

Teyla cracked open one eye and looked steadily at him. Rodney rolled his eyes. "Yes, yes, if you're going to insist on being strictly accurate, then yes it _will_—but I do not see why it requires that I am the one to engage in all the physical exertion."

"I believe you offered to take me out," Teyla said, pointedly arranging the folds of her academicals around her, "as a graduation day treat."

"Logic is dangerous in your hands," Rodney sighed, steering them around another punt full of laughing undergraduates.

"I should hope so," Teyla said. "Otherwise I fear I would be a great disappointment to my tutors."

Rodney cleared his throat. "Not that," he said, making a great show of paying very close attention to the flow of the river around them, "never that."

Later, Teyla would wonder if there was a chance she could have taken then, an opportunity missed that spoke of a failure of courage on one side, imagination on the other—or if the strange tension that kept them in communication long after she had finished at the university could only have found its resolution five years later, the two of them working side-by-side while all around them the world was shaking itself apart.

***

Teyla was reluctantly turning in her work for the day—she knew there was more she could do, though her stomach was starting to cramp with hunger and she was longing for a bath—when Rodney found her. He wrung his hands together nervously, falling into step beside her as they left Hut 6. It had started to rain, a steady drizzle that was slowly melting away the frost that still lay heavily on roof, ground and tree; droplets trickled down the nape of Teyla's neck and under her blouse. "I would like to apologise once more," he told her. "My actions were rude and, and inappropriate and I hope you can forgive me for my... well, I suppose one could classify it as impertinence, but—"

"I am not angry with you for kissing me," Teyla said. It was somewhat the truth—the kiss itself, she did not regret.

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see him studying her—the line of her back, the set of her shoulder, how her hair was slowly being becoming stuck to her scalp because she had walked out without her umbrella. "But you are angry with me," he ventured.

Teyla didn't say anything for a moment, looking down at her feet as they crunched over the gravel, and led Rodney away from the main house and down around the lake. It was quieter here and gave her time to think—to consider how she should phrase things. It would be all too easy to speak from anger, and neither of them deserved that. "I would like to think that I have proven my worth here," she said finally. "Despite the opposition to my presence from some—"

Rodney snorted. "Caldwell's an inbred jackass from Lancashire," he said, before looking shamefaced at the look she cast him. "My apologies. Please continue."

"I am a woman. I am not British. I do not have your advantages of name and family." Teyla took a breath. "I have worked very hard to show that I deserve to be here—that I am able to help. And yet when you succeed in something that we have all been devoting ourselves to for days, Zelenka is the one with whom you celebrate, the one with whom you share your results. I am the one you _kiss_."

Rodney looked baffled. "Well, I could hardly kiss Zelenka."

Teyla folded her arms. She had always known that Rodney was not as swift as she was when it came to understanding the feelings and reactions of others—mostly because he, deeming them unimportant, didn't pay much attention to them—but sometimes it could be very infuriating. "Consider for a moment. After all the time I have spent proving that I am not here because of you—"

Rodney squinted at her. "You _are_ here because of me—if I hadn't given your name to Carville, they wouldn't have known—"

"_Rodney_."

His eyes widened, and he pointed back at the manor. "You mean they think that _I_—really? Oh, oh well that explains—actually I think I may have to punch Kavanagh repeatedly now because if those were insinuations then that actually—but they really thought you were only here because... you and me?"

"Yes." And Teyla knew that after this afternoon, those rumours would have new impetus.

"Well, that is simply insanity," Rodney said, voice brisk with exasperation. "You are here because you are the finest student I had in... well, ever."

"Insanity or not," Teyla said, "It is what I will have to deal with."

"What _we_ will have to deal with," Rodney corrected her.

Teyla raised an eyebrow. "I beg your pardon?"

"It's just that I would really like to kiss you right now," Rodney said, almost embarrassingly earnest. "That is to say—I have, for quite some time, and I have tried to put it to one side and cannot. And I couldn't—when I saw you sitting there..."

Teyla looked steadily at him; he fidgeted a little, but stood his ground, chin tilted upwards. It was January and raining. Her hair was hanging limp and heavy in the rain, her feet were cold, and she knew that when she went in to dinner her appearance would attract even more snide comments. Thanks to him, she would face yet more conjecture; thanks to him, she was here in the first place. She could hardly remember what her life had been like before Cambridge, before him—when she had been Teyla Emmagan, fresh off the boat from Halifax in new shoes that pinched, carrying her whole world in two battered suitcases.

"My desire to help is as strong as yours," Teyla said. Most of her cousins had enlisted—she thought of them every day when she sat down to her work—and she knew that what they were doing here had been much more than an intellectual game for Rodney ever since his sister had left her own university studies in order to become an ambulance driver on the Front. "And my work is as important. If I cannot at least be confident that you know—"

"Please," Rodney said, rolling his eyes. "Your work on the Italian decryptions was—well, I rarely use the term 'masterful', but in this instance I think it is absolutely applicable." Then between one instant and the next, all his bluster died away and he said simply, "Teyla, I couldn't do any of this without you."

For some reason, that lack of affect was what convinced her, what made her sway, and Teyla went up on her tiptoes and pressed her lips to his. Rodney groaned softly, low in his throat, opened his mouth to hers, and it felt natural, the heat that it sparked off low in her stomach—felt good, not to have to calculate for once.

***

The Germans changed the settings for their Enigma machines at midnight; Teyla and Rodney's goal was to find each new combination by a self-imposed deadline of noon the next day. With the bombes running at full capacity, all possible permutations could be tested in less than six hours; thanks to the newer bombe models, a lot of skill and some luck, on average it took them about three hours to find the right crib.

"Impressive work," said Sir Richard Woolsey when he came to inspect Hut 6. No one had been very clear about who he was, but Teyla understood that he was something very high up in the Foreign Office. He wore an expensive-looking suit and a carnation in his buttonhole, bending to peer at the bombe as if he knew how it worked. "Very impressive. Very glad to hear of your work on the North African problem. How exactly do you manage it?"

Rodney looked over at Teyla. Woolsey had arrived shortly after the breakfast, and neither of them had slept. They had had time to change their clothes and comb their hair, but the skin around Rodney's eyes was bruised with tiredness and Teyla was uncomfortably aware that the seams of her stockings were askew. Both of them were still wired with adrenaline, and Rodney's smile was electric as he said, "Oh, the same as with most other things, Sir Richard—slower than we expected, but faster than humanly possible."

***

"I hear I am to congratulate you, Miss Emmagan," Miss Weir said one morning in early April. She held out her hand for Teyla to shake—her palm was cool and dry against Teyla's, her smile warm. "You've made Mr McKay a very happy man."

"Thank you, Miss Weir," Teyla said, with not a little wryness in her voice. Ever since the engagement, Rodney had grown quite effusive—he had never been a man to keep a tight rein on his reactions to the world around him, but neither had Teyla ever seen him smile quite so broadly, so often, before. It was at times a little startling to realise that she could have such an effect on Rodney—though no more so than her realisation that he had made her happy in return. She was a little embarrassed at how often she'd caught herself fiddling with the ring on her left hand as she wrote with her right. "I hope we shall make one another very happy."

"Oh, I have no doubt," Miss Weir said, with such careful sincerity that Teyla was quite sure she was biting the inside of her mouth in an attempt not to laugh—or look over at the other side of the Hut, where Rodney and Mr Zelenka were engaging in a heated debate that seemed to be about, if Teyla had not misheard, the relative merits of mature and oak-smoked Wensleydale cheese. Though to be honest, Teyla couldn't find it in herself to be irritated at Miss Weir's amusement—Rodney could be quite ridiculous at times.

And yet, it seemed, she loved him.

Perhaps she had a little streak of the ridiculous herself.

***

From her early infatuation with romance novels, Teyla knew that any semi-clandestine romance worth its salt required an elopement to Gretna Green. Rodney, however, both tending to dislike Scotland—for reasons unknown to Teyla beyond the fact that they revolved around sheep—and being of a more practical bent, simply went to the registry office in town one day and gave notice of their intent to wed.

"It's the quickest way," he said when he told her. "Fifteen days' wait, but still, I—I want it to be soon, don't you?"

"Yes, of course," Teyla said, and kissed him; and kissed him again when the registrar pronounced them husband and wife.

With Bletchley Park full to bursting as the war grew ever more desperate, there was no hope of them being reassigned to shared quarters. Married or not, when they returned to work they would be sleeping in separate dormitories, just as before—but for this one night, they got to walk together up the dimly lit stairs at The Swan. They went hand-in-hand, and any part of Teyla that felt foolish at that, that felt nervous at being turned into Mrs McKay with a few words and her signature on a piece of paper, was small compared to her sense of contentment—to the unsullied happiness that had left her smiling since the moment she said her vows.

Rodney let them into the room, and placed her small valise next to his beside the dresser. "Well," he said with nervous cheer, "isn't this nice? A western aspect always gives good light."

"Rodney," Teyla said warmly, because she had no desire to discuss the layout of a small provincial hotel room just now, and he understood her perfectly—he crossed the room in a single stride and kissed her. She tilted her head back, opening up to him as he kissed her with all the desire they'd had to keep bridled, restrained, when they were at the Park. Her hat fell off her head, landing unheeded on the floor, and Teyla slipped her hands under Rodney's suit jacket, feeling the solid heat of his back through the cotton of his shirt.

"I love you," Rodney whispered to her, his eyes closed, cradling her face in his hands. "You know that, don't you? I love you."

"I love you too," Teyla said, and helped him unbutton her blouse, shrugging the thin silk off her shoulders. His fingertips on her bare skin made her shiver; his mouth, sucking at her through her brassiere made her moan. She tangled her fingers in his hair, scratching her nails against his scalp and shivered when that made him scrape his teeth against her. "Please," she said, and reached around to unhook her brassiere, tossing it to land with her hat and blouse. In front of any other man, Teyla would have been embarrassed to be bare from the waist up; the heat in Rodney's eyes, the reverence in his touch, put paid to all embarrassment and had her fumbling to help him out of his shoes and socks, jacket and tie and shirt and trousers.

"So many layers," Teyla said, laughing against his mouth. "I thought only women had to suffer over-complicated clothes."

"Believe me," Rodney said, hopping on one leg in order to get rid of his trousers that little bit quicker. "I am strongly considering lodging a complaint."

His erection was already straining against the blue cotton of his boxers; Teyla squeezed her thighs together, nursing the sweet ache that was growing between them. She reached behind her and undid the zip of her tweed skirt, letting it fall around her ankles before stepping out of it.

"That's the last of it," Rodney said, straightening up. He was now wearing nothing more than his boxers. "Thank the—oh my," he said when he caught sight of her, and sat down rather heavily on the bed. "You—you look. Oh my."

Teyla looked down at herself. She was not as quick at undressing as Rodney—she was still wearing her French knickers and garter belt, the coveted nylon stockings that Laura Cadman had helped her procure, and her best pair of heels. "Really?"

"Apparently yes," Rodney said.

Teyla was more than a little intrigued at whatever it was that had made Rodney's jaw go slack. "Is it that I'm not wearing a brassiere? The stockings?"

"Either," Rodney croaked. "Both. All of them. I..."

Teyla favoured him with her wickedest grin, and reached up to rub one aching nipple between thumb and forefinger. "Do you require more empirical evidence?"

Rodney closed his eyes and shuddered for a long moment. "Don't do that," he said, "if you want me to last."

"I do want you to," Teyla said, moving to straddle his lap. The feel of his erection against her was perfect, and she couldn't help the way her hips pressed down instinctively against his, making them both moan. "And I want you inside me, now," she said, and kissed him. This kiss was hotter; the feel of her nipples rubbing against his bare chest made her pant, and Teyla didn't know how Rodney's fingers were still deft enough to reach up and pull the pins from her hair, letting it tumble free down her back.

Each of them had been working on solving the problem of the other for years, but it seemed that once they had the crib, once they knew that the answer was as simple as _yes_, they could read one another with frightening ease. Teyla learned quickly that a series of stinging bites to the line of Rodney's jaw made him gulp for air; Rodney realised that tracing his fingertips in feather light patterns around the small of her back before cupping her hips in his big palms was enough to turn the silk of Teyla's panties damp. She had been aroused before—by other men; when she was alone in her room—but never this quickly, never this thoroughly. Her skin felt too hot all over, as if she were slowly burning up from within; her pulse was coming so fast that it made the fine bones of her wrist ache.

"Teyla," he moaned, and she let him roll her onto her back, pulling off her shoes and panties but leaving on the garter belt and stockings. Teyla spread her legs, expecting penetration—ready for it—and the shock of Rodney's mouth on her made a bow of her back.

"Oh, oh god," she said, pushing herself shakily up on her elbows so she could look down the length of her body at him. Between the heat of his tongue and the rasp of his stubble, the slow and steady press of his fingers inside her, arousal was almost overwhelming. No man had ever done this to her before—had ever done this _for_ her before. Rodney's blunt fingers could push further inside her than her own, the angle so much deeper, and Teyla could feel her hair sticking to her scalp with sweat. Rodney crooked his fingers inside her and sucked once, hard; dimly, Teyla heard the headboard rattle against the wall as she came.

It took long minutes for her to come back to herself, for her pulse to steady and her breathing to even out. All her muscles felt loose and relaxed, and Teyla went contentedly when Rodney gathered her up in his arms and rolled so that he was lying on his back with her on top of him. "Hello, Mrs McKay," he said to her, hands tracing the length of her sides over and over.

"Hello, husband." Teyla kissed him. His mouth was wet with the taste of her and she stretched against him, feeling deliciously sated. She could feel his erection pressing against her belly, and the anticipation of it was enough to have satiation begin to be replaced by renewed arousal.

Rodney's fingers were cool against her over-heated skin, her tender breasts. "Could I," he whispered to her, "could you stay on top? I want to see you."

Teyla's eyes widened a little—she had never lain with anyone like that—then she grinned. Many would already have condemned them for what they had done so far this evening; what harm agreeing not to lie on her back? "What are they teaching you in Cambridge these days?" she said with mock severity, rising up on her knees and taking him in hand.

"You would be surprised," Rodney said, eyes alight with laughter, before swearing with great fluidity as Teyla lowered herself onto him. He wasn't overly long, but thick enough to make her shudder, and when he started to push up into her, her head rolled back on her neck.

"Oh god," Rodney said, voice cracking. "Beautiful."

Teyla grinned down at him. She felt lit up from the inside, bright as a newborn star, and she worked her hand between her legs before telling him, "Harder."

He took hold of her by the hips and _thrust_, and Teyla could not stop the laughter from welling up inside her. "Yes," she said, "_yes_," knowing that she would feel this tomorrow when she sat back down at her desk in Hut 6—knowing that the others would only see Rodney's ring on her finger but that she would still be able to feel him inside her; that the smile she would share with him across the room would be a puzzle which only he had the key to unlock.

Rodney pulled her down to him as he came, pressing fervent kisses to her collarbone, her neck, her mouth with trembling lips. He murmured her name, over and over, and that was enough to make her come for a second time. Teyla felt limp with pleasure, and dragged her silk-stocking-clad foot up Rodney's calf just to feel him shiver—just because she could.

"I think that went well," Rodney said when he could speak, and pressed a kiss to her temple.

"For a preliminary gathering of empirical evidence," Teyla said, laying her head on his chest, "I thought it went quite well." The steady thrum of his heart against her ear was reassuring, and she pressed a kiss to the point just over his heart—_husband_, she thought. It was still a little strange, this new way of thinking of him, but it was far from unpleasant. "But you know that we will need a much wider sample before we can draw any solid conclusions."

"We have fifteen hours before we have to be back at work," Rodney said quickly.

"Time enough for an adequate sampling," Teyla said, straight-faced.

"I have cracked very complicated codes in far less," Rodney said, running his hand down her back and making her shiver. "Do you remember in '41, when we—"

"Rodney," Teyla said and stretched against him, slow and deliberate, "must we talk about work right now?"

His eyes went very wide. "No. No, no, not at all, in fact—"

A kiss served to silence him very effectively indeed.

***

Teyla had been training herself for years to see possibilities, probabilities, likelihoods. She was good at her work, at coaxing dead letters to speak, at finding meaning in places where before there had been only disorder. She had helped reduce odds of one hundred and fifty million million million to one to the realm of the attainable—to sleepless hours in the middle of the night when they were all over-caffeinated and jittering, studying the latest intercepted messages and alive with the feeling of being so close to victory they could almost sense what it would be like.

On VE Day, it seemed as if the whole world was rejoicing in the streets—church bells pealed out the news of victory and someone set up a wireless in the window so that people could dance across the lawns to the music and the news pouring out from the BBC. Teyla could scarcely believe it, that after six years of fear and fire a first measure of peace was returning to the world. All across Europe, the guns were falling silent, and as Rodney waltzed her across the grass, he alternated between kissing the wide curve of her smile and the salt tears from her cheeks.

"Impossible odds, hmm?" he said lightly, one palm resting between her shoulder blades, the other holding her hand as they turned.

"Improbable," Teyla teased him—an old joke between them, never to discount anything, because after all, what odds would have been placed on them back in '35? Who would have thought the world would come to this? And yet here they were, together, and Teyla kissed him softly on the mouth before they swayed on together, cheek to cheek.


End file.
